She | novel by Haggard | Britannica.com novel by Haggard Alternative Title: “She: A History of Adventure” Similar Topics A Tale of Two Cities She, in full She: A History of Adventure, romantic novel by H. Rider Haggard , published in 1887, about two adventurers who search for a supernatural white queen, Ayesha , or “She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed,” who is the ruler of a lost African city called Kôr. Ayesha has waited for 2,000 years for the reincarnation of her lover, whom she killed out of jealousy. She is beautiful and powerful and finds her reincarnated ideal in Leo Vincey, who is her lover’s descendant. He falls under her spell, and she attempts to make him immortal; she tries to persuade him to pass through a magic fire, but in doing so herself, she ages and crumbles into dust. Learn More in these related articles: Ayesha fictional character, the supernatural white queen of a vanished African city in the romantic novel She (1887) by H. Rider Haggard.

Ayesha ("She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed") is a beautiful and majestic woman with supernatural powers who spends centuries waiting for the reincarnation of a lover from past... in Horace Rumpole ...cheap wine (“Château Thames Embankment”) and Keats’s poetry and refers to his wife as “She Who Must Be Obeyed” (an allusion to the title character of H. Rider Haggard’s She). First introduced in a 1975 BBC television drama, Rumpole reappeared many times in a television series that ran in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Mortimer based several... 2 References found in Britannica Articles Assorted References Corrections? Updates? Help us improve this article! Contact our editors with your feedback. MEDIA FOR: You have successfully emailed this. Error when sending the email. Try again later. Edit Mode Submit Tips For Editing We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles. You can make it easier for us to review and, hopefully, publish your contribution by keeping a few points in mind. Encyclopædia Britannica articles are written in a neutral objective tone for a general audience.

You may find it helpful to search within the site to see how similar or related subjects are covered. Any text you add should be original, not copied from other sources. At the bottom of the article, feel free to list any sources that support your changes, so that we can fully understand their context. (Internet URLs are the best.) Your contribution may be further edited by our staff, and its publication is subject to our final approval. Unfortunately, our editorial approach may not be able to accommodate all contributions. Submit Thank You for Your Contribution! Our editors will review what you've submitted, and if it meets our criteria, we'll add it to the article. Please note that our editors may make some formatting changes or correct spelling or grammatical errors, and may also contact you if any clarifications are needed. Uh Oh There was a problem with your submission. Please try again later. Close Date Published: July 06, 2014 URL: Access Date: January 19, 2017 Share She by H.

Rider Haggard, a classic fantasy adventure book includes notes and reading group guide 1978 Del Rey paperback, 282 pages cover art by Michael Herring (right) From the back cover of the Modern Library paperback: A runaway bestseller on its publication in 1887, H. Rider Haggard's She is a Victorian thrill ride of a novel, featuring a lost African kingdom ruled by a mysterious, implacable queen; ferocious wildlife and yawning abysses; and an eerie love story that spans two thousand years. She has bewitched readers from Freud and Jung to C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien; in her Introduction to this Modern Library Paperback Classic -- which includes period illustrations by Maurice Greiffenhagen and Charles H. M. Kerr -- Margaret Atwood asserts that the awe-inspiring Ayesha, "She-who-must-be-obeyed," is "a permanent feature of the human imagination." From the back cover of the Del Rey paperback: For two thousand endless years, She had maintained her vigil. She, whose supernal powers could have made emperors her slaves, was only the Witch Queen of the debased and savage Amahagger.

Her awesome beauty was veiled from the world in the isolated African valley of Kï¿½r. She waited. For in Kï¿½r lay the mummified body of her lost lover, Kallikrates - killed by her hand when he turned to other women - and She was doomed to tarry until he should come again in mortal flesh. Then into Kï¿½r, guided by an ancient manuscript, came two strangers - Holly and his ward, Leo Vincey. Leo Vincey - in every way, her Kallikrates reborn! But with him was Ustane, the other woman, also incredibly reborn. Was the goddess Isis still unsatisfied with her vengeance? Must the tragedy be replayed? With all the fury of desperation, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed drew her terrible powers about her and began to unveil... From the back cover of the Hodder and Stoughton hardback (cover seen below): "She" is a story of the strangest love triangle ever chronicled. The man of the triangle is a mortal man. The women are symbols of fiercely opposed emotions. One represents power, passion and beauty.

The other, contributive and constructive, represents fireside, home, family, and most important of all...love..... Read for group discussion on October 9, 2002 More book covers: She 6 Aaron's Commentary H. Rider Haggard – She Taken only as an adventure story, She is enjoyable but unexceptional, not comparable to, say, Edgar Rice Burroughs for rousing action. The story bogs down at times, particularly when Ayesha launches into her archaically phrased monologues. Haggard makes up for this, however, in other ways. For one, he manages to impart a strong feeling of realism. This novel has the texture of science fiction not fantasy. Our narrator Mr. Holly repeatedly stops to describe carefully the foliage around him or the pottery he’s eating from, in a level of detail that at times interrupts the flow of the narrative, but adds much authenticity. More importantly, Haggard has carefully thought through the various aspects of his lost civilization, for instance how the elaborate design of the city of Kï¿½r eventually caused the destruction of its people.

This distinguishes this story from other early science fantasy settings, Barsoom for example, which never have a real world feel. Haggard also raises a host of thought provoking issues. The story of Ayesha frames intriguing questions about how it would affect someone to live almost forever. She in turn poses many interesting questions of her own, particularly on religious issues, and Holly persistently engages in other random philosophical musings about the human condition. There is much to think about here, at a level removed from the underlying adventure. Probably the greatest strength of this book is its depiction of She Who Must Be Obeyed, a very strong female character. While She is not technically the protagonist, She is certainly the most important character, easily overshadowing the two rather bland leading men. She Who Must Be Obeyed apparently epitomizes Haggard’s view of women. She has all the strength and intelligence that women can possess, but is ultimately ruled by her emotions. There is nothing condescending, however, in the way Haggard portrays her. She is certainly flawed, but all the more interesting and believable for it. She would be a notable character in a work of fiction today; that Haggard created her over a century ago is remarkable.

What do you think? Your comments are welcome. Please send them to vanaaron@excite.com Movies of She: There have been eight (!) movies based on or inspired by H. Rider Haggard's novel She, according to The Internet Movie Data base (IMDb) . She was filmed in 1935, 1965, and 1985. The other five versions were silent movies, filmed in USA unless otherwise noted, made in 1908, 1911, 1916 (UK), 1917, and 1925 (UK/Germany). She (1925) stars Betty Blythe as Ayesha. The most faithful adaptation of the book. She (1935) stars Helen Gahagan as She, Randolph Scott as Leo Vincey, Nigel Bruce as Horace Holly, and Helen Mack as Tanya Dugmore. The setting is moved from Africa to the arctic (!), Leo is an American, the character of Ustane is transformed into Tanya, but much of the plot involving She is true to the book.

She (1965) stars Ursula Andress as Ayesha, Peter Cushing as Major Horace Holly, John Richardson as Leo Vincey, Rosenda Monteros as Ustane, and Chistopher Lee as Billali. The story diverges in numerous ways from the book, yet the characters remain fairly intact. (Note - There's also The Vengeance of She (1968)) She (1985) appears to be an odd and very unfaithful adaptation. There were Nazis in a post apocalyptic world. Sandahl Bergman stars as She. Definitely a B movie, if not a turkey. Bibliography: (Sir) H. Rider Haggard (1856-1925) was a UK writer of fiction and nonfiction. Full name Henry Rider Haggard. He was knighted in 1912. Haggard wrote science fantasy adventure books about lost worlds, and ancient civilizations. His best known books are She (1887) which features a lost city in Africa, immortality, and reincarnation; and King Solomon's Mines (1885) which tells the African adventures of white hunter Allan Quatermain.

Both books have been made into movies multiple times. Ayesha books (in order of publication): -- She: A History of Adventure (1887) -- Ayesha: The Return of She (1905) -- She and Allan (1921) She by H Rider Haggard: Book Review Manuscript format: get your novel ready for submission She by H Rider Haggard: Book Review She by H Rider Haggard is one of the first and probably the most famous of the ‘lost world’ novels. H Rider Haggard published it in serial form in 1886-87 and with minimal revisions as a novel in 1887. It was incredibly popular and is still one of the best-selling books of all time, having sold over a hundred million copies. She by H Rider Haggard: Logline A Cambridge professor and his adopted son travel to Africa in search of a lost civilisation and the near-immortal woman who rules it. She by H Rider Haggard: Plot Summary Warning: My plot summaries contain spoilers The major spoilers are blacked out like this secret . To view them, just select/highlight them. It’s the mid-nineteenth century.

A Cambridge professor, Horace Holly, is visited by an old friend. The friend claims he is dying and asks Holly to become guardian to his young son, Leo. When Holly agrees, the friend also gives him a locked box, asking him not to open it until Leo is twenty-five. That night, the friend commits suicide. Twenty years later, Holly and Leo open the mysterious box to discover an ancient shard of pottery bearing an extraordinary tale of a lost city in East Africa. Holly and Leo decide to discover if the story is true or not. They charter a ship to take them to the nearest coastline, but nearing the area it sinks in a storm. Escaping the sinking ship in the ship’s boat, they land and make their way inland until a group of tribesmen find them. The tribesmen tell Holly that their queen, ‘ She-who-must-be-obeyed’, had foretold the arrival of strangers. Leo finds himself ‘married’ to one of the women of the tribe, Ustane, but others of the tribe try to kill the strangers and Leo is badly wounded.

The tribal chief returns and asks the adventurers to go with him to the lost city of Kôr where ‘ She-who-must-be-obeyed’ awaits them. Arriving at the city, Holly meets ‘ She-who-must-be-obeyed’, who’s real name is Ayesha. Ayesha claims she is thousands of years old and has been waiting in the ruined city of Kôr for the reincarnation of her lover for two thousand years. Ayesha allows Holly to see her face, which he describes as unutterably beautiful, but cruel. Later Holly witnesses Ayesha, distraught, speaking to an embalmed corpse she addresses as ‘Kallikrates’. It seems that Kallikrates was her lover who she murdered in a fit of jealousy. Next day, Leo is critically ill, and Holly asks Ayesha to help him. When Ayesha sees Leo, she is dumbfounded, convinced that he is the reincarnation of Kallikrates… Ayesha gives Leo medicine that saves his life. She also orders Ustane to leave the city and never return.

When the recovered Leo asks Ayesha what happened to Ustane, she lies, claiming Ustane left of her own accord. The group attends a dance where Leo once more meets Ustane, who has returned to ask Leo to run away with her. But Ayesha sees the two talking and uses her power to kill Ustane. Leo attacks Ayesha but her power makes her invulnerable. She tells Leo that despite her brutality he will be won over as soon as he sees her beauty. She unveils herself and Leo is indeed instantly smitten. Ayesha tells Leo they will be married as soon as he has bathed in the ‘Pillar of Life’, a fire that confers long life, great beauty and incredible powers. They will then travel to London and rule the British Empire, if not the entire world. Both Leo and Holly see the inevitability of the plan’s success and, although horrified, feel compelled by their love for Ayesha to do nothing to stop it. The group travel to the Pillar of Life, which is within the mountains outside the city. After a difficult journey they reach the cave and Leo and Ayesha are married. Despite this, Leo is reluctant to enter the fire.

Ayesha says she will go first to prove it is safe. When she enters the fire, instead of renewing her powers, the Pillar of Life reverts them, and as she is two thousand years old she shrinks to a husk. Just before she dies she asks Leo to wait for her reincarnation as she waited for his. Finally, Leo and Holly return to England, where Holly writes the history of their adventure and speculates that Ayesha will indeed return. She by H Rider Haggard: Analysis Attitudes Lets get this out of the way first. Obviously, She by H Rider Haggard is a very old novel now and steeped in the conventions and concerns of Victorian Britain: that female empowerment might lead to emasculation, that Britain’s racial or civilisational superiority over other cultures might not actually be real, that premonitions that the British Empire was fading were correct.

These racist and sexist views are offensive to most people these days, but as I’ve noted in many of my reviews of other classics like The Riddle of the Sands and The Great Impersonation , allowances must be made for the views of the time if you are to enjoy the story, and as a spotlight on the late-Victorian way of thinking She by H Rider Haggard is fascinating. Also, I’m not sure how seriously we should take the sexism of a novel that contains the surely-tongue-in-cheek line: True, in uniting himself to this dread woman, he would place his life under the influence of a mysterious creature of evil tendencies, but then that would be likely enough to happen to him in an ordinary marriage. Plot She by H Rider Haggard has a Hybrid plot. The protagonists start with a Mission – find the lost city and meet ‘ She-who-must-be-obeyed’, but once they have done so it becomes a Gothic Romance. There’s also a lot of the episodic Travelogue to the story, betraying its original publication in weekly instalments. Many chapters centre on an encounter either with a new character or a new place and this ‘what happens next?’ element was interesting.

But for me the novel really gets going about half way through once the protagonists arrive in Kôr and meet Ayesha herself. The philosophical discussions between Holly and Ayesha – concerning male-female relationships, life and death, love as a redeeming force, the nature of evil and truth, religion as a bromide – still have relevance to a modern reader, though they may not agree with the opinions of the characters. Some of the Gothic scenes in the novel, such as the ‘hot pot’, the tombs of Kôr, and the natives using the mummified remains of the citizens of Kôr as flaming torches, are macabre. But the romance between Ayesha and Leo is rather ruined by the fact that Leo is such a complete non-entity, while Ayesha is astonishing. Why she’d even be interested in Leo, let alone wait two thousand years for him, I have no idea. Unfortunately, I felt the ending of She was a real let down, because there’s no final confrontation or dilemma for the protagonists. I was anticipating Leo and Holly struggling to fight the bewitching beauty and immense power of Ayesha and so save the British Empire.

Instead, in a completely unheralded deus-ex-machina, an accident effectively, the genie is simply put back in the bottle. Imagine my disappointment. It’s interesting to note that I was unable to use my logline formula to summarise She by H Rider Haggard, as it isn’t clear what the protagonists’ goal is once they get to Kôr, they simply become in thrall to Ayesha and tag along with her until the author runs out of ideas and brings the narrative to an end. Perhaps though this says something about modern obsessions with ‘narrative arcs’ – can a hundred million readers be wrong? Aside: The Location of Kôr Holly describes the first section of the journey inland along the river after the shipwreck as covering about one hundred and forty miles. They then spend four days paddling and towing the boat along an ancient canal before they meet the tribesmen who carry them to their village in about a day. From the village to Kôr through the swamps takes them another two days and a day walking along the dry canal across the plain to the city itself. This all makes Kôr about two hundred to two hundred and fifty miles inland.

On their return, Holly describes the Zambezi as being one hundred and seventy miles south of Kôr. Interestingly there is a mountain that fits this description: Mount Mulanje, which is in Malawi. Characters The only interesting character in She by H Rider Haggard is Ayesha herself. Holly, despite being the narrator has little personality and what he does have is unattractive. Leo barely speaks, and the author sketches in the characters the protagonists meet during their adventures. Ayesha herself though is a phenomenal character. For a start, the idea that she has to wear a veil because anyone who looks upon her falls immediately and uncontrollably in love with her is intriguing. But she’s also by turns magnificent, imperious, seductive, intellectual, merciless, philosophical, and brave. Her actions, though objectively evil, come from her timeless indifference to mortality and her conviction that nothing in the world matters, except for her all consuming obsession with her reincarnated love. The reader can believe she really is two thousand years old and morality has ceased to have meaning for her.

Reality: Great Zimbabwe At the time H Rider Haggard was writing She, much of Africa was unknown to Europeans and the ruins of the city of Great Zimbabwe had only recently been found. They are situated near Lake Mutirikwe in what was then South Zambezia, later Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe. Built in the late Iron Age, probably by ancestors of the Shona people, the city would have housed up to eighteen thousand people. At the time, speculation that the ruins might have been built by the biblical ‘Queen of Sheba’ were common, though purely fanciful. Writing Style The writing style in She by H Rider Haggard varies between the overblown and the ultra-plain, it is not in any way a novel to be read for the beauty of the language. ‘Show don’t tell’ is a classic rule and one that is horribly ignored by the author. Many, many times in the novel the narrator says, in so many words, ‘it was awesome, but I can’t describe it very well, sorry’, which is dreadful writing. It also suffers from the Victorian tendency to explain logistics in great detail, becoming long-winded and slow.

Many modern readers would find the first half of the novel so boring they’d never get to the entrance of Ayesha herself. However, like a lot of very influential novels, the clichés in She weren’t actually clichés when it was written – they became clichés because the book was so phenomenally successful, and hence influenced whole genres, being one of the prototypes of the science-fiction and fantasy adventure. And that influence continues, with the Indiana Jones movies being hugely influenced by both She and King Solomon’s Mines. She by H Rider Haggard: My Verdict They don’t write them like this any more. Except they kind of do. She by H Rider Haggard: Movies She by H Rider Haggard has been filmed many times. The most notable is the Hammer Films version of 1965, staring Ursula Andress as Ayesha. It’s not a terrible film, but it’s pretty low-budget, despite being the highest budget movie the studio (Hammer Films) ever produced. In consequence, it’s not particularly faithful to the novel, for example being set in Israel and Egypt and featuring a different ending.

She by H Rider Haggard: Sequels There are three sequels to She by H Rider Haggard. The first Ayesha , concerns Holly and Leo, searching for the reincarnation of Ayesha and also encountering her Egyptian nemesis. The second, She and Alan, is a ‘franchise crossover’, where the hero of many of Rider Haggard’s other novels, Alan Quatermain, travels to Kôr and battles a rebellion among Ayesha’s subjects. The last novel in the series is another prequel, Wisdom’s Daughter, which tells the story of Ayesha’s two thousand year life, from ancient Arabia, to Egypt, Persia, Greece and on to Kôr. Want to Read It? As it is long out of copyright, She by H Rider Haggard is available for free on the Guttenberg Project here. The movie of She by H Rider Haggard is available on Amazon US here and on Amazon UK here . Agree? Disagree? If you’d like to discuss anything in my She by H Rider Haggard review, please email me. Otherwise, please feel free to share it using the buttons below.

Other Articles You Might Like Urban Dictionary: swmbo SWMBO Acronym for She Who Must Be Obeyed. Term of endearment for one's wife/girlfriend (or resignation to the nature of your relationship). The term originates from the H. Rider Haggard novel, "She" (first published 1886). The character Ayesha, known as She-who-must-be-obeyed, the Queen of Death, the White Goddess,of the lost city of Kôr who rules her kingdom with terror, She is the very image of the Femme Fatale. To disobey her or to scorn her is to earn & receive instantaneous death. I was going to terminate the squirrel I'd trapped, but SWMBO insisted that I release it in a nearby park. H. Rider Haggard - Free Online Library The Free Library > Literature > H. Rider Haggard H.

Rider Haggard (1856 - 1925) Henry Rider Haggard was born in West Bradenham Hall, Norfolk, the eighth son of William Haggard, a barrister and a country squire, and Ella (Doventon) Haggard, an amateur writer. In his childhood, the young Henry Rider was seen as the family dunce by his father. Haggard was not sent to a good public school like his brothers, but was instead educated at a London day-school, although privately, and Ipswich Grammar School. After failing the army entrance, Haggard went to Natal in 1875 as a secretary to Sir Henry Bulwer, Governor of Natal colony. In 1877 he joined the staff of the special commissioner. The next year he became Master and Registrar of the High Court in the Transvaal. For the rest of his life Haggard viewed with understanding the British colonial policy, sharing in the attitude of his friend Rudyard Kipling . On the other hand, he also traveled widely and saw the dangers of European intrusion.

Thus in the end of King Solomon's Mines Haggard left the lost land of the Kukuanas to continue its own separate development. During his years in Africa, Haggard got acquainted with the Zulu culture. It is said, that he had an affair with an African woman, a profound relationship, which perhaps influenced his portrayal of women and subsequent psychoanalytic interpretations of his works. Among his devoted reader was Carl Jung, who used the novel She (1887) as an example of anima. According to Jung, the anima is an archetypical form, expressing the fact that a man has a minority of female genes. Haggard's Queen Ayesha is an unmistakable anima type - the ultimate guide and mediator to the inner world. The idea has also connections with the observations of James Frazer in his classical study The Golden Bough. Haggard's idea of a journey into the "darkest Africa," which turns into a spiritual search, has been used by a number of writers, including Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness (1902). Ludwig Horace Holly is the narrator of the hallucinatory She.

The story depicts an adventurer, Leo Vincey, who receives a mysterious legacy from his father. He goes to Africa to search for the truth behind the death of an ancestor, Kallikrates, who was an Egyptian priest slain by an ancient sorceress She-Who-Must-Be Obeyed: Queen Ayesha, a 2000-year-old ruler of the Lost World of Kôr. With his friends, Leo travels through dangerous regions and reaches catacombs of the Kingdom of Kôr. There they encounter She, the white Queen of the Amahagger people. "I could clearly distinguish, however, that the swathed mummy-like form before me was that of a tall and lovely woman, instinct with beauty in every part, and also with a certain snake-like grace which I had never seen anything to equal before." She tells that her name is Ayesha. "My empire is of thy imagination," she says. Holly tries to teach her doctrines of Christianity but she answers: "The religions come and the religions pass, and civilizations come and pass, and naught endures but the world and human nature." She saves the life of Leo who is dying after being wounded in a fight with cannibals.

Ayesha sees in him Kallikrates. She promises to make him live forever if they walk together into a pillar of flame. Ayesha enters the Fire of Life at the heart of a volcano and emerges from it immeasurably old. She dies and asks Leo to remember her in her eternal youth and beauty. "'Kallikrates,' she said in husky, trembling notes. 'Forget me not, Kallikrates. Have pity on my shame; I die not. I shall come again, and shall once more be beautiful, I swear it - it is true!'" Ayesha disintegrates; she is swept back to nothingness. The story was followed by two sequels, Ayesha (1905), in which Haggards asked, "Who and what was Ayesha, nay - what is Ayesha?" and Wisdom's Daughter (1923). After Haggard returned in England in 1880, he married a Norfolk heiress, Mariana Louisa Margitson. They moved to Transvaal to Haggard's ostrich farm.

When Transvaal had to be ceded to the Dutch, they went back to England, where Haggard continued his law studies. The death of his son in 1891 was a deep blow. Haggard was admitted to the Bar in 1884, but showed little interest in practicing his profession - he had other plans. After retiring to a Norfolk country house, Haggard devoted himself to writing. He had earlier published a study of contemporary African history. His first books, Dawn (1884) and The Witche's Tale (1884), were undistinguished. According to a story, when R.L. Stevenson's Treasure Island appeared in book form in 1883, Haggard did not think much of it, and made a five-shilling bet with his brother, that he could write a better story. The outcome, created in six weeks, was King Solomon's Mines, a story of a group of treasure hunters searching legendary diamond mine in a lost land.

In the story Sir Henry Curtis, Captain John Good and the veteran hunter Allan Quatermain, accompanied by Umbopa, their native servant, set off to reveal the fate of Curtis's missing brother - he has gone to look for the treasure of King Solomon in the land of Kukuanas. They cross terrifying deserts, nearly freeze in the mountains, and after a long journey, they reach their destination. Umbopa turns out to be a king, and he wins the villainous King Twala, who dies in the combat with Curtis. The adventurers find Solomon's mines, but are left to die in an underground vault by Gagool, the horrific witch-doctor. After an escape they find Curtis's brother and return to the civilization. The adventure tale became a sensation, and Haggard's book has been in print ever since. Haggard repeated his success with three novels set in Africa - She, Jess, and Allan Quatermain, all published in 1887. In Allan Quatermain the heroes from King Solomon's Mines, Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good, return to Africa, after being disillusioned with Western culture.

Accompanied by Allan Quatermain, they journey to the lost land of Zu-Vendis, where Curtis becomes a king and Quatermain dies. However, Quatermain appeared again in several other novels. In Allan and the Ice-Gods (1927) the hero ingests a hallucinogenic drug and finds his mind transported to the body of a prehistoric caveman. The author's fantasy and myth-making later inspired several film directors. Allan Quatermain (1987), directed by Gary Nelson, was a follow up to 1985's King Solomon's Mines (1985), directed J. Lee-Thompson and starred Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone. The favorite adventure novel has been filmed half a dozen times, but none of the films have captured the spirit of Haggard's original work. At the age of thirty-four, Haggard had become a household name. He published anywhere from one to three books a year, in which the setting ranged from Iceland to the South Seas. Haggard also tried his hand in several forms of the novel: psychological (Mr. Meeson's Will), historical (Cleopatra) and fantastic (Stella Fregelius).

During his career, he wrote over forty books. Many of his titles referred to a female character or attribute - Montezuma's Daughter (1894), Pearl Maiden (1903), Queen Sheba's Ring (1910), and The Virgin of the Sun (1922). Although the Victorian age was the first Golden Age of the ghost story, Haggard's sole attempt in this genre was 'Only a Dream,' published in Smith and the Pharaohs (1920), a collection of short stories. With the editor and historian Andrew Lang, Haggard wrote a sequel to Homer's Odyssey, The World's Desire (1890). Eric Brighteyes (1891) was Haggard's excursion into the Norse saga. "And now that time which she foresaw has come, and Heaven knows that I have thought of her, poor dear. Ah! those footsteps of one dead that will echo through our lives, those woman's footprints on the marble flooring which will not be stamped out. Most of us have heard and seen them at some time or other, and I hear and see them very plainly tonight.

Poor dead wife, I wonder if there are any doors in the land where you have gone through which you can creep out to look at me tonight? I hope that there are none. Death must indeed be a hell if the dead can see and feel and take measure of the forgetful faithlessness of their beloved." (from Only a Dream) In 1895 Haggard stood unsuccessfully for Parliament for East Norfolk. Between the years 1912 and 1917 he traveled extensively as a member of the Dominions Royal Commission. Haggard was an expert on agricultural and social conditions in England and on colonial migration. His books on farming, such as The Farmer's Year Book and Royal England, were based on long journeys through the country and thoughtful research. For his non-fiction, such as The Poor and the Land (1905), and for his government services, Haggard was knighted in 1912. In 1919 he was created Knight Commander of the British Empire. Haggard died in London, on May 14, 1925. He left behind four completed novels.

Three of Haggard's siblings - Andrew, Edward, and Eleanora - also published fiction, Eleanora under her married title, Baroness Albert D'Anethan. Like his friend Rudyard Kipling, who celebrated the heroism of British colonial soldiers, Haggard believed in the British Empire. His works are full of action in colorful locations. There his protagonists find exotic, hidden societies, and encounter many dangers and characters with strange powers. In this, his works anticipated Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan books or the John Carter stories set in Mars, in which the lost world idea was applied to science fiction. Haggard's own mythological world can also be seen as a precursor of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stories. Although Haggard's novels first were written for adults, several of them belong now to the juvenile literature. Some of Haggard's opinions, especially his belief of a Jewish worldwide conspiracy, have shadowed his later reputation and otherwise open-minded approach to foreign cultures. Moreover, the Haggard bloodline included Jewish and Indian relations. Haggard's diaries, published in 1980, reveal his curiosity to a wide variety of subjects.

His fascination with the Zulu culture, based on knowledge of history and traditions, can be seen in his portraits of Umbopa, the rightful king of the land of Kukuanas in King Solomon's Mines, and the heroic Umslopogaas in Allan Quatermain, as well in the Zulu trilogy Marie (1912), Child of Storm (1913), and Finished (1917). Also in Montezuma's Daughter, set in Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest, Haggard showed sympathy for a threatened culture. Secrets of Haggard's private life - although married to another, he lived for years close to the woman he had always loved - have revealed that behind the mask of a respected Victorian gentleman was a more complex personality than generally has been known. Suggested sites for H. Rider Haggard: She -- H. Rider Haggard She -- H.

Rider Haggard Friday, 26 June 2009 19:42 Dave Truesdale Englishman Henry Rider Haggard's (1856-1925) novel She: A History of Adventure, was serialized in The Graphic magazine from October, 1886 to January, 1887. Set in the Victorian era, when much of the planet still held tightly to its mysterious, unmapped lands, it is one of the first of what would come to be known as the "lost world" tale, a popular type of romantic adventure which would subsequently be emulated by many others. This journey into unknown territory follows intrepid adventurers on an expedition (inspired from a cryptic manuscript left by the deceased father of one of the explorers) as they sail from England all the way south of the island of Zanzibar, there to finally hit land on the Dark Continent, where they discover a small, lost civilization in the remote interior.

They soon enough run into quite a bit of trouble, beginning with the discovery of ancient stone carvings, underground crypts, mummified bodies, cannibals, a curse, and the hidden domain of an immortal goddess/queen, who has enslaved a tribe of natives, who nevertheless worship her. The natives have given their immortal goddess the name Ayesha (who will figure in later Haggard novels), which is a translation from the Arabic for "She who must be obeyed." The goddess-queen She offers the explorers (one in particular) immortality (and the one she has chosen, the promise of her love), if only they will follow her into the forbidding abyss deep in the mountainous cavern wherein resides the Flame of Life. Will our stalwart troupe find it within themselves to resist the womanly charms and gentle seductions of the goddess, or will they succumb and allow the Flame of Life to imbue them with immortality, whereupon the one she has chosen will rule at her side forever? Are her motives sincere? Will an ancient prophecy be fulfilled?

"She" aired on one of old time radio's most respected dramatic shows, Escape (1947-1954), on July 11, 1948, and while heavily condensed, manages to capture the exotic atmosphere, the thrill and dread of the dark and mysterious nature of the book quite well, despite what I felt to be a too-quick--albeit dramatic--finale. As of 1965, Haggard's novel She had sold 83 million copies in countless editions worldwide. It was also made into a 1965 Hammer film, the most lavishly produced of the Hammer films to that time. It starred the voluptuous Ursula Andress (pictured at right, who was the first of many "Bond" girls, from 1962's Dr. No), Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee. While details of Hammer's She escape me, it deserves another viewing if for no other reason than a second look at the charms of the alluring, Swiss-born, 1960's film sex-goddess, Ursula Andress. (As an anecdotal aside, Ms.

Andress won a Golden Globe Award in 1964 as New Star of the Year for her role in Dr. No. For trivia buffs, her famous white bikini from that film sold for 35,000 pounds at auction in 2001. Born in 1936 and now 73, she retired from acting in 2005. Along the way, however, she was married to film actor/director John Derek from 1957 to 1966, dated the likes of Marlon Brando and James Dean, and had a child by actor Harry Hamlin, with whom she co-starred in the film Clash of the Titans [with thanks to Wikipedia for the anecdotal material which I stumbled upon, found interesting, and decided to toss in].) Without further ado, enjoy Escape's well-produced dramatization of H. Rider Haggard's She. Play Time : 29:31

Question: What was the name of "She who must be obeyed" in the novel She by H Rider Haggard?
Answer: AYESHA